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madmickey -> RE: Norden Bombsight (10/10/2004 10:49:09 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Twotribes
Kosovo was no great success. The Serbs offered terms before the bombing began, the Nato forces rejected them, do a little research and you will find out that in the end, the Nato forces, after bombing for how long? accepted nearly verbatem the original Serb terms.
Did a little research to confirm you opinion, I am not saying Clinton was a great war president (he should have pursued terrorist with more vigour) in my initial post I made it clear that it was mismanaged and Milosevic gave in because he was a chicken.
It should also be pointed out that the claims of mass execution of Kosovoo Muslim was greatly exaggerate
here is a discription of the war
http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Kosovo%20War
"The Rambouillet talks began on February 6, 1999 and were intended to conclude by February 19; in the event, they went on until March 19 before they broke up with no agreement reached. In the view of some of those present, neither the Serbian nor the Albanian side went to Rambouillet with any real intention of reaching an agreement. The Albanian delegation was very senior but was chronically unable to agree a position, perhaps not surprisingly given that it represented a spectrum of opinion that included the pacifist Rugova and the hardline Demaci. The Serbian delegation was led by then president of Serbia Milan Milutinovic, while Milosevic himself remained in Belgrade. This was in contrast to the 1995 Dayton conference that ended war in Bosnia, where Milosevic negotiated in person. The absence of Milosevic was interpreted as a sign that the real decisions were being taken back in Belgrade, a move that aroused criticism in Serbia as well as abroad; Kosovo's Serbian Orthodox bishop Artemije traveled all the way to Rambouillet to protest that the delegation was wholly unrepresentative.
The biggest problem for both sides was that the Contact Group's non-negotiable principles were mutually unacceptable. The Albanians were absolutely unwilling to accept a solution that would retain Kosovo as part of Serbia. The Serbs did not want to see the pre-1990 status quo restored, and were implacably opposed to any international role in the governance of the province. The negotiations thus became a somewhat cynical game of musical chairs, each side trying to avoid being blamed for the breakdown of the talks. To add to the farce, the NATO Contact Group countries were desperate to avoid having to make good on their threat of force - Greece and Italy were strongly opposed to the whole idea and there was vigorous opposition to military action in every NATO country. Consequently, when the talks failed to achieve an agreement by the original deadline of February 19, they were extended by another month.
In the end, on 18 March, 1999 the Albanian, American and British delegation signed what became known as the Rambouillet Accords while the Serbian and Russian delegations refused. The accords called for NATO administration of Kosovo as an autonomous province within Yugoslavia; a force of 30,000 NATO troops to maintain order in Kosovo; an unhindered right of passage for NATO troops on Yugoslav territory, including Kosovo; and immunity for NATO and its agents to Yugoslav law. The American and British delegations must have known that the new version would never be accepted by the Serbs or the Contact Group. These latter provisions were much the same as had been applied to Bosnia for the SFOR (Stabilisation Force) mission there. However, the Albanians had very nearly refused - and did refuse in February, prompting a two-week break in the talks - before the KLA hardliners finally caved in. Their motives for signing are still somewhat murky. Some analysts believe they signed the agreement only because they knew that it would not be put into effect and that they truly would not settle for anything other than full independence. Another factor may have been the dramatic appeal made to them by the foreign minister of Albania, Paskal Milo, who warned the delegates that Kosovo faced "extinction" if agreement was not reached, and the heavy pressure applied by United States Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. The Albanians may also have gambled that the Serbs would not sign under any circumstances.
If the accords did not go far enough to fully satisfy the Albanians, they were much too radical for the Serbs, who responded by substituting a drastically revised text that even the Russians found unacceptable. It sought to reopen the painstakingly negotiated political status of Kosovo and deleted all of the proposed implementation measures. Among many other changes in the proposed new version, it eliminated the entire chapter on humanitarian assistance and reconstruction, removed virtually all international oversight and dropped any mention of invoking "the will of the people [of Kosovo]" in determining the final status of the province. Even the word "peace" was deleted. The Serbian delegation must have known that the new version would never be accepted by the Albanians or the Contact Group. It was immediately apparent that Milosevic had decided to call NATO's bluff, believing that the alliance would either not make good on its threat or would do no more than launch a few pinprick raids that could easily be absorbed. Perhaps most fundamentally, Milosevic appears to have calculated that he had more to lose by making peace than waging war - although the KLA was undefeated, its defeat was nonetheless just a matter of time in the face of the far more powerful Serbian and Yugoslav security forces.
Critics of the Kosovo war have claimed that the Serbian refusal was prompted by unacceptably broad terms in the access rights proposed for the NATO peacekeeping force. These would allow (in the words of the agreement's Appendix B) "free and unrestricted access throughout [Yugoslavia] including .. the right of bivouac, maneuver, billet, and utilization of any areas or facilities as required for support, training and operations." This was based on standard UN peacekeeping agreements such as that in force in Bosnia, but would have given broader rights of access than were really needed, and onto the entire territory of Yugoslavia, not just the province. It has been claimed that Appendix B would have authorised what would amount to a NATO occupation of the whole of Yugoslavia, and that its presence in the accords was the cause of the breakdown of the talks. "
...............(several pargraph about war)
"By the start of June, the conflict seemed little closer to a resolution and NATO countries began to think seriously about a ground operation - an invasion of Kosovo. This would have to be organised very quickly, as there was little time before winter set in and much work would have to be done to improve the roads from the Greek and Albanian ports to the envisaged invasion routes through Macedonia and northeastern Albania. At the same time, however, Finnish and Russian negotiators continued to try to persuade Milosevic to back down. He finally recognised that NATO was serious in its resolve to end the conflict one way or another and that Russia would not step in to defend Serbia. Faced with little alternative, Milosevic accepted the conditions offered by a Finnish-Russian mediation team and agreed to a military presence within Kosovo headed by the UN, but incorporating NATO troops"
can you you supply me with your discrpition
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